Free John Brown by Raymond Lamont-Brown Page B

got so alarmed that I begged to land, and Lady Douro was of my opinion that it was much better to get out. We accordingly landed, and rode home along a sort of sheep-path on the side of the lake, which took us three-quarters of an hour. It was very rough and very narrow, for the hill rises abruptly from the lake; we had seven hundred feet above us, and I suppose one hundred feet below. However, we arrived at the hut quite safely at twenty minutes to seven, thankful to have got through our difficulties and adventures, which are always very pleasant to look back upon. 2
    As a matter of course the Queen now included the names of the gillies whenever she wrote about her Scottish jaunts, and the ladies of the court began discreetly eyeing up the handsome Highlanders, from Archibald Fraser Macdonald, whom Prince Albert trained up as his Jäger , to Head Keeper John Grant who was dour but striking. The Hon. Eleanor Stanley, one of the Queen’s Maids of Honour, noted ‘the most fascinating and good-looking young Highlander [is] Johnny Brown’.
    Certainly Brown was now playing a more prominent role. Prince Albert observed him as he handled the ponies on their hill walks in his new position as undergroom. Brown seemed the most skilled of the gillies in negotiating the patches of bare granite and dangerously loose scree they encountered on 6 September 1850 as they ascended 3,940ft Ben-na-Bhourd. So Prince Albert decided that John Brown should ride on the box of the Queen’s carriage instead of the usual postillion who was unused to the terrain. Prince Albert had grown to like Brown – as one reporter put it: ‘The Prince Consort [was] struck by [Brown’s] magnificent physique, his transparent honesty and straight-forward, independent-character.’ 3
    It was common knowledge in royal circles that the Coburgs ‘were cursed with melancholia’. 4 From his marriage to Queen Victoria in 1840 to his death in 1861, Prince Albert was often made ‘wretched by the loneliness of exile’ 5 as a stranger in a foreign land, and at such times he sought the solace of solitude. Thus he often went off on his own to hunt deer, or to be alone – apart from attendants – at the hut he had built at Feithort. Sometimes the Queen would seek out the prince at Feithort, with Brown leading her pony, but her visits were not encouraged, and she realised that the prince needed time away from his family and his relentless work on efficiency measures for her Household. Now that John Brown was keeping an eye on the Queen when she was out riding, Prince Albert could follow his own agenda of Highland pursuits without feeling guilty. When Albert was away, Queen Victoria and her daughters went on painting picnics, with John Brown taking them to the best views and the most comfortable locations for their repast. Queen Victoria wrote to Augusta of Prussia, Empress of Germany, that ‘I only feel properly à mon aise and quite happy when Albert is with me.’ 6 In widowhood it was to be a sentiment she expressed about John Brown. In the meantime, ‘Johnny Brown’ was in his element.
    Victoria’s aunt, Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the crowned consort of King William IV, had died in December 1849, and the Queen was still in mourning when her favourite son Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, was born in May 1850. Victoria’s thoughts had turned to Scotland more and more during her confinement, especially to the plans she had made with Prince Albert for the development of the estate which was now firmly theirs. The purchase of neighbouring Birkhall for eight-year-old Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, meant that he was now the ‘first royal landowner on Deeside’, and the lease of nearby Abergeldie greatly increased the bedroom space for future royal jaunts. Queen Victoria had already decided that Abergeldie should be made ready for her mother, the Duchess of Kent, so that she could enjoy the healthy benefits of Deeside; more immediately it would help